…and this is a 
Whoa. This was a data-rich talk, and my ability to transcribe it was over-whelmed by all the stuff Hauser was tossing out. Unfortunately, I think the talk also suffered from excess and a lack of a good overview of the material. But it was thought-provoking anyway.
One of the themes was how people resolve moral dilemmas. He began with a real world example, the story of an overweight woman in South Africa who insisted on joining a tour exploring a cave, and got stuck in the exit tunnel, trapping 22 people behind her. Do you sacrifice one to save many? One of the trapped people was a diabetic who needed to get out—should they have blown up the woman so the others could escape? This was presented as a kind of philosophical trolley problem, and the audience was asked what was best to do…but I don't think it works, because unlike those philosophical dilemmas, in the real world we pursue different strategies, and it's rarely a black and white situation where one has to choose between precisely two possibilities — as in this case, which was resolved by greasing her up with paraffin and pulling her out.
Hauser gave an overview of the philosophical explanations for making moral decisions.
Hume: morality intuitive, unconscious, emotional
Kant: rational, conscious, justified principles
Theist: divine inspiration, explicit within scripture
Rawls: intuitive, unconscious, grammar of action: not emotional, built on principles
He's going to side with Rawls. The key difference between a Rawlsian morality and the others is that a moral decision is made unconsciously, and THEN emotional and rational justifications are made for it. This is testable if you have a way to remove the emotional component of decision; a Rawlsian moral agent will still make the same moral judgments. Studies of brain damaged patients with loss of emotional affect support the idea so far.
He analogized this to linguistics, in which we make abstract, content-free computations to determine, for instance, whether a particular sentence is grammatical. This computation is obligatory and impenetrable; we can't explain the process of making the decision as we're doing it, although we can construct rules after the fact.
For instance, he summarized three principles that seem to be general rules in moral judgments.
Harm intended as the means to a goal is worse than harm seen as a side-effect.
Harm caused by action is morally worse than harm caused by omission.
Harm caused by contact is morally worse than equivalent harm caused by non-contact
We don't judge morality purely on the basis of reasonable outcomes, but also on intent. He suggested that judging only on the basis of whether an outcome is bad or good is a primitive and simplistic strategy, that as people mature they add nuance by considering intentionality — someone who poisons a person accidentally is less morally culpable than someone who does it intentionally.
One example he gave that I found a bit dubious is the use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to shut down regions of brain, in particular the right temporal/parietal junction (which seems to be a locus of intent judgment). In subjects that have that region zapped (a temporary effect!) all that matters is outcome. These studies bother me a bit; I don't know if I really trust the methodology of TMS, since it may be affecting much more in complex and undefined ways.
Does knowledge ofthe law affect moral judgments? Holland no longer makes a legal distinction betwwen active and passive euthanasia, and many Dutch people are able to articulate a belief that passive euthanasia is less human than active euthanasia. Do the Dutch no longer percieve the action/omission distinction in Hauser's 3 rules? In a dilemma test, they still make the same distinctions on active and passive stories as others do — actively killing someone to save others is morally worse than simply allowing someone to die by inaction to have the same effect — which again suggests that the underlying mechanisms of making moral decisions are unchanged.
In these same dilemma tests, they've correlated outcomes with demographic data. The effects of religion, sex, etc. are negligible on how people make moral decisions.
He makes an important distinction: These are effects on judgment, not behavior. How does behavior connect with judgment?
Hauser describe Mischel's longitudinal studies of kids given a simple test: they were given a cookie, and told they'd get more if they could hold off on eating it for some unspecified length of time. Kids varied; some had to have that cookie right away, others held off for longer periods of time. The interesting thing about this experiment is that the investigator looked at these same kids as adults 40 years later, and found that restraint in a 3 year old was correlated with greater marital stability, for instance, later in life. The idea is that these kinds of personal/moral capacities are fixed fairly early in people and don't seem to be affected much by experience or education.
There were some interesting ideas here, and I would have liked to have seen more depth of discussion of individual points. The end of the talk, in particular, was a flurry of data and completely different experiments that weren't tied in well with the thesis of the talk, and there weren't opportunities for questions in these evening talks, so it was a bit difficult to sort everything out.
Comments
Posted by: CypressRun | October 30, 2009 10:05 AM
Stuck in a cave with a fat woman wedged in the only way out...UNHOLY FUCK!!! That is some scary shit. I'm now feeling a phobia of caves, fat women and parafin coming on. Thanks PZ! That was great timing for Halloween tomorrow.
Posted by: PsyberDave | October 30, 2009 10:08 AM
Morals also don't seem to come from the world outside of our brain. I mention this because many people seem to operate on the assumption that morals are observable facts as if one could observe and discover something to be moral.
Posted by: debaser71 | October 30, 2009 10:13 AM
Marc Hauser did a very excellent interview on Point of Inquiry from last year.
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/marc_hauser_moral_minds/
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | October 30, 2009 10:13 AM
PZ: Thanks for the summary. For those of us who didn't go to the conference, its nice to be able to read about these talks, hot off the press, as it were. Even better, as an evolutionary biologist, reading your blog counts as "work". Thanks for making my job more enjoyable.
Posted by: taranaki
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October 30, 2009 10:17 AM
I am going to have to listen to the Hauser talk again. I did not get much on the first pass. I was fried. Just getting to Hyde Park was difficult. Rush "hour" in Chicago starts around 5am and lasts until 7:30pm - and sucks to various degrees the entire time. There is little difference between inbound and outbound. And when it rains like yesterday .... enough to make you believe in Satan.
So I was still absorbing Lewontin when Hauser tried to stuff twenty pounds of potatoes into a ten pound sack. My brain hurt.
Posted by: Richard Eis | October 30, 2009 10:18 AM
- where do morals come from? NOT religion.-
Shame the religious have yet to have this fact rammed into their heads. Oh wait, there are some moral codes in the bible...
...but trust me, you wouldn't want to follow them.
Posted by: Unity | October 30, 2009 10:21 AM
Sounds very much in keeping with Hauser's book, Moral Minds, which takes a bit of digesting but it well worth the effort.
Posted by: Nils Ross | October 30, 2009 10:24 AM
I'd argue that there's no way to separate moral judgement on the basis of intent from moral judgement on the basis of consequence, provided the consequence considered is sufficiently higher order.
In a world where there were no second order ramifications in the railcar dilemma, for example, I'd have no problem with pushing the fat guy in front of the car to stop it (neglecting practical issues like the fact I might derail the car and kill the passengers). But there are second, third, and higher order ramifications for actions, and killing the fat man raises the prospect of someone else using my action to justify a similar action where the numbers perhaps aren't so strong. I save four people by killing the fat man; the next person to kill a fat man saves three. Someone else takes that precedent and saves a cat; the next guy just pushes the fat guy into the oncoming rail car to save the state some health care money. And so on.
This might be why intent has become important. It's a moral shorthand that compresses higher-order consequences and protects the group from them. Just a thought.
Posted by: zowie | October 30, 2009 10:25 AM
It's always a woman that is used in this hypothetical questions. You know the kind of questions that humiliate a person.
Posted by: AdamK
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October 30, 2009 10:36 AM
When faced with a moral dilemma, the first thing I always do is grease up the fat lady. Works like a charm.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | October 30, 2009 10:38 AM
What if "morals" were just a convenient label we stuck on for post facto self-justification we can't explain? YOu know, kind of like how "religion" is 'explanation' for luck, bad luck, and natural events we can't explain otherwise? It seems to be very important to some people to feel that they're "moral" so that, then, what they do is rationalized and justified but it seems like Hauser is engaged in a bit of backwards creo-style reasoning. I.e.: "I think I have morals, therefore they are real." Wouldn't a scientist be asking "is there anything there for us to talk about?" Lots of people feel they have 'souls' and 'free will' too and the prognosis doesn't look so hot for either.
Posted by: Feynmaiac | October 30, 2009 10:39 AM
Hauser's book Moral Minds discusses these points in greater detail. I recommend the book. It convincingly shows that morality works very differently and is far more complex than most of assume.
Posted by: CunningLingus
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October 30, 2009 10:39 AM
OK .. A "moral dilemma" .. Bill Donohue is teetering on the edge of a cliff, and gradually loosing a very tenuous grip on a rail. You have in your possession a rope, a cell phone, a safety harness, a dozen fireman with ladders within shouting range, and a bible, it's easily within your power to save him.
The dilemma is, do you attend the funeral?
Posted by: CunningLingus
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October 30, 2009 10:45 AM
Another dilemma.
If you had to have sex with Ken Ham to save your life, would you opt for burial or cremation?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | October 30, 2009 10:45 AM
ok. Who's going to pay for this monitor?
Posted by: Richard Eis | October 30, 2009 10:58 AM
-The dilemma is, do you attend the funeral?-
Not after how hard I hit him with the bible. It would be rude.
-If you had to have sex with Ken Ham to save your life-
Top or bottom?
Posted by: Roland J Branconnier | October 30, 2009 10:59 AM
I second Feynmaiac on Moral Minds. It is a true Magnum Opus.
Posted by: Teh Merkin | October 30, 2009 11:08 AM
In "Moral Minds," Hauser uses both men and women in his examples. And his examples are not meant to humiliate anyone.
Posted by: thepugilist
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October 30, 2009 11:09 AM
Good stuff. There's a Nova show about what makes us human that does something similar to the cookie thing. They put some candy in front of kids and told them that if they waited to eat it they could have more. The show wasn't about moral dilemmas, but how similar we are to primates and what age a child's behavior starts to differ from the behavior of primates. I thought it was a very good show, it really opened my eyes to just how similar we are to primates. It's at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/apegenius/program.html.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | October 30, 2009 11:14 AM
just how similar we are to other primates
Posted by: thepugilist
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October 30, 2009 11:21 AM
"just how similar we are to other primates"
Very true, I missed that a few times in there. Old habits I guess.
Posted by: MrFire
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October 30, 2009 11:24 AM
How about:
You are a True Believer. A 'saved' child and an elderly agnostic with terminal cancer are hanging desperately off that same cliff.* You only have time for one of them. Are you obliged to try and save a soul, or try and save a life?
*Bill Donohue has long since fallen into the crocodile pit at the bottom.
Posted by: D. Cancilla | October 30, 2009 11:32 AM
Pardon the blatant self plug, but I just self published "Ask Yourself to be Moral" -- a book on making moral decisions without religion (it's a companion to my atheist blog). I'm already getting ranting feedback from religious folks who think that morality is impossible without God. I wouldn't mind so much if they'd buy a copy of the book before complaining about it!
I also wouldn't mind so much if it were true that religious people are more moral than non-religious people, but I don't find that to be the case. In fact, I find that, in general, those who think they already have the answer spend less time thinking about the question.
If anyone's interested:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/ask-yourself-to-be-moral/5547313
Posted by: Feynmaniac | October 30, 2009 12:05 PM
@ #12 It's sad when I cannot even type my own pseudonym right.
Marcus Ranum,
I wouldn't go that far. It's true that the after-the-fact rationalization is almost certainly not why the person made the decision. They may believe it, but the decision was probably made unconsciously for a variety of reason (e.g, empathy, self-interest, etc.). However, people do often behave altruistically even when it's against their interest. Experiments have shown other primates often do so as well. It makes sense that social creatures would have some sort of mechanism to keep cooperation and that this mechanism is hardwired into us. Hauser makes the point that you don't need to be a philosopher or scientist to make good moral decisions and that's probably for the best, given the amount of social interaction that goes on daily. However, philosophers and scientist could shed light on an issue as complicated as morality.
Human beings are complex and there are many forces at work going on in our heads. You can't treat people like rational self-interest beings because they are neither,unfortunately, completely rational nor, fortunately, act only in their self-interest (nor are they solely altruistic).
Posted by: Mod | October 30, 2009 12:15 PM
Sounds like a similar talk to this one:
http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.html
Which is not surprising given they were both authors on the paper
"The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment" Which can be read Here.
Posted by: Matt Heath | October 30, 2009 12:52 PM
I don't think Rawls thought moral principles were just post hoc justifications for the judgments you'd have made anyway. I read A Theory of Justice fairly recently and the relationship between principles and specific judgments was that if they didn't match you should reflect on them and change whichever on balance seemed more wrong. Hopefully eventually you achieve "Reflective equilibrium" - principles producing judgments you are happy with. He claims his principles of justice (or something close to them) should this equilibrium for reasonable people (he was fairly good at recognizing the shakiness of this, I think). He was definitely arguing that we should adopt these principles as the basis for public morality (private matters were fenced off - he was a good liberal) not that we naturally do adopt them.
Also he thought moral virtue beyond what could be expected by universal principles (the virtues of "saints and heroes") was basically Humean - e.g. the desire to forego ordinary comforts to feed the poor comes from a strong feeling of sympathy.
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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October 30, 2009 1:13 PM
So how did it go from a fat woman being stuck to blowing her up? Not that I don't enjoy a good explosion, but spelunking with explosives seems a bit dangerous. If I had my druthers, I would have offered up dismemberment and cleaving as a safer option instead.
Posted by: natural cynic | October 30, 2009 1:37 PM
Harm caused by contact is morally worse than equivalent harm caused by non-contact
Obvious examples of this are wartime decisions. Using a Predator/Hellfire to carry out an assassination with considerable collateral damage is preferable to send in a SEAL Team to do the same thing, with the added benefit of lack of risk, even though the collateral damage would be probably less. The reasonable assumption of substantial civilian casualties at Hiroshima/Nagasaki was preferable [certainly in Truman's mind] compared with the unknown civilian casualties of invading Japan. And a sniper killing an enemy at 500 meters has less of an effect and seems preferable to killing the same enemy with a bayonet. If you can see the face and the blood, you're doing it wrong.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | October 30, 2009 1:42 PM
If you had to have sex with Ken Ham to save your life, would you opt for burial or cremation?
That wins the thread, I think!!!
Re: "moral minds" - just ordered a copy. Looking forward to it.
Posted by: R. Schauer
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October 30, 2009 1:47 PM
Hmmm, looks like Marc's book comes right after I finish "The Greatest Show on Earth." Sounds like it was an interesting talk...thanks for passing it on, PZ.
(Sounds like the entire conference is great! Thanks again for keeping the minions fed!!!)
Posted by: Norman Doering | October 30, 2009 1:49 PM
lose_the_woo wrote:
"I would have offered up dismemberment and cleaving as a safer option instead."
I hope you kill her first. It would be cruel if you didn't.
Related to the topic of morality, my latest video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeyyBpKMumM
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | October 30, 2009 1:56 PM
Feynmaniac writes:
It's true that the after-the-fact rationalization is almost certainly not why the person made the decision. They may believe it, but the decision was probably made unconsciously for a variety of reason (e.g, empathy, self-interest, etc.).
I'm still witholding judgement as to whether or not we have free will. Given the arguments I've heard for it, I'm inclined to think that, like "souls" and "morals" it's probably a figment of our imaginations. I'm still reading up on that topic (and, woe is me, I started with Dennett...)
However, people do often behave altruistically even when it's against their interest. Experiments have shown other primates often do so as well. It makes sense that social creatures would have some sort of mechanism to keep cooperation and that this mechanism is hardwired into us.
If it's hardwired in, it's not "morals" it's just another hardwired behavior. We might be able to say that we have a sense of "right and wrong", that'a result of our hardwired behaviors, but that's hardly the same thing as having a sense of right and wrong. That, in a nutshell, is why I am pretty skeptical that we actually do have such a sense. If it's all being driven by a selfish gene, then we're just meat robots not moral actors. That strikes me, in fact, as the most parsimonious explanation, and doesn't require any adaptationist hoop-jumping.
Hauser makes the point that you don't need to be a philosopher or scientist to make good moral decisions and that's probably for the best, given the amount of social interaction that goes on daily.
I look forward to reading it!
You can't treat people like rational self-interest beings because they are neither,unfortunately, completely rational nor, fortunately, act only in their self-interest (nor are they solely altruistic).
I treat people like they're meat robots, just like me.
Posted by: lose_the_woo
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October 30, 2009 1:59 PM
Not unless she was a mean bitch. Ok fine - a really mean bitch.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | October 30, 2009 2:00 PM
Matt Heath writes:
. Hopefully eventually you achieve "Reflective equilibrium" - principles producing judgments you are happy with.
What if I am happy being a serial killer as a result of my "reflective equilibrium"?
Posted by: David D.G. | October 30, 2009 2:04 PM
Or should they, perhaps, turn around and go back through the cave to get out by way of the ENTRANCE tunnel? The overweight woman was obviously able to get through that with no trouble.
Sure, this option lacks the (artificial) drama of the other considerations, and it adds a few more minutes to the departure time --- but, seriously, why did nobody consider this as an obvious alternative?
~David D.G.
Posted by: CJO | October 30, 2009 2:07 PM
Marcus,
Please justify the contention that a sufficiently robust meat robot cannot also be a moral actor. "I am a meat robot" is trivially true, not an answer to any of our questions about free will and ethical accountability.
Posted by: Paul | October 30, 2009 2:23 PM
CJO,
Would you mind defining "moral actor"? As I understand it, Marcus is framing the term "moral" as a meaningless label to describe post-hoc rationalization of what actions/paths we "meat robots" take. As such, it's not that they cannot be moral actors, it is that moral lacks meaning.
I'm on the fence, myself. Not that I do not think there is no benefit to enumerating and generally enforcing a behavioral code, I just think it is off to describe morals as anything other than that. And conflating the actions we subconsciously take with what should or not should be encouraged/allowed is just more of the naturalistic fallacy.
Posted by: thepugilist
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October 30, 2009 2:33 PM
I grabbed a link off of one of the Science Blogs a while back, though I can't remember which one it was. It's a series of videos from a Harvard class about moral dilemmas called Justice with Micheal Sandel. There are different episodes where different types of moral dilemmas are discussed. I've watched a few of them and enjoyed them.
http://justiceharvard.org/
Posted by: Matt Heath | October 30, 2009 2:59 PM
Marcus Ranum
He doesn't claim that principles and judgments satisfying reflective equilibrium are necessarily moral just that it's a good thing for principles to satisfy. Someone who doesn't care about being just won't care about any theory of justice. The basic argument of AToJ is along the lines of "If you care about A, B and C (which people typically do) you should accept principles X, Y, and Z and and example of a society you should be happy with is W. Also, it is mostly about what "justice" should be taken as meaning for public institutions and such rather than personal morality.Anyway, it's a really big book; it deals with most of the "what about"s you can come up with, but I can't probably can't. It's worth plowing through if your interested, though. It avoids both of the sets reasons science-minded people often dislike philosophy - racing away with speculative bullshit or wallowing in mind-numbing detail
Posted by: Matt Heath | October 30, 2009 3:02 PM
DOH! "you're interested" not "your"
Posted by: whitebird | October 30, 2009 3:08 PM
That's all very interesting, but the whole time I was reading, my brain was overwhelmed by by the Fat Lady Stuck In The Cave thing - and for some reason, my mind sees it drawn in tin-tin comic style.
Posted by: whitebird | October 30, 2009 3:14 PM
Zowie@#9
" It's always a woman that is used in this hypothetical questions. You know the kind of questions that humiliate a person."
The lady in question, apparently, was no hypothetical:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6225301.stm
Posted by: CJO | October 30, 2009 3:28 PM
Well, yes, there's a conceptual minefield here that I'm blithely skirting, I'll admit. But to me the fact that we currently recognize all kinds of circumstances and conditions under which "faulty" meat robots are morally compromised (mental illness, intoxication, immaturity, manipulation, coercion) suggests that while the word 'robot' is loaded, the concept doesn't exclude considerations of meaningful ethical/moral behavior, at least as far as ordinary ethical intuition is concerned.
As for a definition, I'd say 'a moral agent' is one who has expanded one's sense of self-interest beyond the self proper to kin and/or community (however broadly construed), and acts deliberately to maximize the well-being of that group and all its members. It's that 'acts deliberately' that will probably be identified as begging the question in the current context, and maybe that's so. I'm mainly just arguing against the opposition of 'meat robot' and 'moral agent.' I don't think the one excludes the other, is all.
It's a complicated discussion obviously, and I probably should not have weighed in, given that I don't have time to do it justice (heh) at the moment.
Posted by: wiley | October 30, 2009 3:45 PM
The conference sounds like a real hoot. Testing moral judgment by using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to shut down regions of the brain; using Greed to get a kid to hold off eating the cookie... very strange people, but using paraffin to dislodge fat chicks from the cave exit? That's an old trick.
Posted by: Paul | October 30, 2009 4:30 PM
Do your "circumstances and conditions" cause moral compromise or judgemental compromise? We're back at the referent for the term moral. I'm not sure I would be willing to grant that the above conditions change anything more than our "meat robot" circuitry (to use the term that spawned this sidebar) and the choices/actions it is likely to make/take under different conditions. Under that view, once again morality boils down to rationalizing what the meat robot did given a certain set of stimuli, and your lapse in morality is simply how it differs from the nominal reaction without the compromising circumstances.
Yeah, I think that is where the difference in opinion enters in. Do we act deliberately? Is there free will? Do you consider a great ape that protects a human child that falls into it's enclosure to be a moral agent? But now I'm rambling. I agree that there is nothing intrinsic in the terms "meat robot" and "moral agent" to cause mutual exclusion. However, if you consider "moral" to have no real meaning, naturally you would not consider "meat robots" to be "moral agents". This does not preclude a collection of meat robots deciding it's a good idea to flesh out a framework of ethical accountability, it just starts with different assumptions than those who posit free will as existing or those who posit intrinsic morality as a starting point.
Thanks for chipping in, I appreciated the chance to give it some thought. I am not exactly replying at length, either.
Posted by: Crewvy
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October 30, 2009 4:31 PM
Note to self,
Don`t go caving with asthmatics , diabetics or fatties.
Posted by: Don Cates | October 30, 2009 4:33 PM
Then there's the lawyer's moral dilemma.
You've discovered that you have accidentally overbilled a client. Do you tell your partner?
Posted by: Divalent
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October 30, 2009 5:01 PM
"The effects of religion ... are negligible on how people make moral decisions."
Well, they just didn't probe the full set of "moral behaviors" that are in play in the world.
Is it moral to eat bacon, have sex with someone you are not married to, marry someone of a different race, charge interest when you lend money, lift heavy objects on Saturday, let a man who is not your husband or relative see your face, get forcibly raped, impune the character of Jesus or Mohammed or Joseph Smith, declare any one of the many mutually exclusive religions in the world to be false, not immediately chew and swallow a cracker placed in your mouth by a Catholic priest, etc, etc, etc.
Posted by: Kel, OM | October 30, 2009 5:12 PM
This is the talk I'm most looking forward to seeing.
Posted by: Tophr
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October 30, 2009 5:21 PM
Moral Minds in paperback is only $5.95
Posted by: Brownian, OM
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October 30, 2009 5:34 PM
There's more to this one, and it is an example of where I think some aspects of morality may be influenced by religion.
As it stands, I've often wondered when the shift occurred from valuing a 'proven' individual more than a 'potential' one to the converse. For example, most members of Western cultures would say that an innocent baby is more precious than an adult. Yet many nomads, pastoralists, and most hunter-gatherers would claim the adult's life is more worthwhile, largely because survival in those cultures is often a matter of learned skills and immunity. A baby could die tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, but a twenty-five-year-old has survived the dreaded first five years of high infant mortality and demonstrated they have the wherewithal to be a successful hunter and gatherer, not fallen off of any cliffs due to inattentiveness, and they've managed to fight well enough/get along well enough to have not been murdered. Hell, the twenty-five-year-old can father more babies if needed.
Yet, somewhere along the line in the last 10,000 years, this fundamental way in which human life is evaluated has changed, for some of us at least. My first inclination is to assume some sort of agricultural cause, but I can't think of any, and I'm not sure that this love-of-innocence is common to agricultural/industrial societies, which is why I submit it might be the result of the history of Christianity in the west.
Any thoughts?
Posted by: Kel, OM | October 30, 2009 5:40 PM
I remember hearing an interview with Marc Hauser and he was mentioning that when you put into factors additional information, the conventional morality gets thrown out the window. If you rerun the trolley problem with a muslim and it's 5 jews compared to 1 muslim, then he won't flick the switch even though he said he would without knowledge of their religious backgrounds.Posted by: Oran Kelley | October 30, 2009 5:53 PM
What thesis regarding religion are you trying to contest here? I don't see how this has much to do with religion at all.
I don't really think that dilemma tests end up telling us much about morality, because they don't very well simulate the social contexts in which moral decisions are generally made.
How, for instance, does the Richmond rape scene jibe with all this?
Thinking about it you quickly realize that tough moral decisions involve a whole other order of thinking that this doesn't really address.
And if you are addressing people who think religion has some moral value AND who would be influenced by the existence of this work, you are probably not talking to people who think morality "comes from" religion in the simplistic manner you imply here.
Posted by: Paul | October 30, 2009 5:59 PM
If they think religion has some "moral value" which cannot be justified on a purely secular basis, then yes, you are dealing with people who possess simplistic notions of morality. They could still likely be influenced by this work via actually thinking about what underpins morality, and eventually realize the nullity of the first half of your AND conditional.
Posted by: Kel, OM | October 30, 2009 6:19 PM
You've never heard claims by theists to the ilk of "without God there can be no good", "If you don't matter to God, you don't matter to anyone", "if there is no God, then what reason is there to be good"? I hear a variation on this almost every time I interact with a theist in regard to atheism.It's either that those who argue religion are psychopaths who need God to tell them that it's wrong to go around murdering and raping, or that they are gravely mistaken as to how morality works. I'd bet that it is the latter option.
Posted by: The Wholly None | October 30, 2009 6:29 PM
Several thoughts, Brownian. There is probably a gender difference in how people value lives, and people pay more attention these days to female opinions. That's a hypothesis worth testing. Moreover, it seems to be a matter of supply and demand; the fewer children one has, the more one values each one. Males value children more, too, if they are sure of their parentage.
I don't think this is a particularly western culture shift. I saw it on the news when earthquakes destroyed Chinese schools and when disease killed children in Africa and when Sumatrans were swept away by a tsunami.
Posted by: Brownian, OM
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October 30, 2009 6:45 PM
Good thoughts, The Wholly None, but there are a few claims that I think are incorrect:
Hunter-gatherers, many of whom do/did practice infanticide, tend to be much more egalitarian than agricultural ones. (Probably more accurately, if a society exists in which egalitarianism and gender equity exists, it's probably hunter-gatherer.
I think paying attention to female opinions makes one less likely to demand that every single child birthed (or conceived) must live at all costs.
Among hunter-gatherers (and I'm grossly generalising), the premium is on successfully raising children to adulthood, rather than having many. If you've got a four-year-old who still requires substantial parental care and you accidentally have another, you'll consider killing the newborn (or leaving it to die) if it's not possible to raise both. You'd never sacrifice the four-year-old for the newborn.
Damn, it's Friday afternoon and I'm leaving the office for non-internet-connected (but beerful) parts. I'll have to pick this thread up tomorrow.
Posted by: CJO | October 30, 2009 7:01 PM
"beerful"
Wunderbar! Auf wiedersehen.
Posted by: bcoppola
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October 30, 2009 10:44 PM
#50 - thanks, just ordered my copy!
This brings up what I've wondered about, based on admittedly a cursory recall of something I've read in the popular press: that neuroscience suggests many of our beliefs, not just morality, might be simply a post hoc rationalization for our "gut instincts". I am probably garbling it. Does Hauser or somebody else reputable have anything to say about that?
Posted by: bcoppola
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October 30, 2009 10:46 PM
s/b "might be simply post hoc rationalizations".
Posted by: Oran Kelley | October 31, 2009 1:37 AM
Yes there are people who make very unsophisticated and uninteresting arguments about religion. The counter-arguments are only marginally more interesting, really.
And I find the folks who make these unsophisticated and uninteresting arguments in favor of religion are generally pretty impervious to uninteresting and unsophisticated (albeit valid) arguments against them.
More fun and better for the brain are to try to deal with better arguments on behalf of religion.
One argument that religion is important to morality pretty much takes the line a) there is no god; b) morality, ultimately, has a biological basis; but c) morality works much better in a social context when the social/moral landscape is simplified--i.e. that there is a strong social code of morality that I can expect will constrain the behavior of others.
Religion is a good kind of such a strong social code because it resists personal interpretation, its strictures are known to everyone, it is stable over time, etc.
There were some fairly good arguments made along these lines in the whole debate in 17th-century England & America about the need for state religion
This kind of view would also probably take the position that practical morality is not a mere matter of moral theorizing, but is more like a game, and that game theory experiments, while radically simplified, give us a much better notion of how morality works than answers to notional ethical dilemmas.
Posted by: Kel, OM | October 31, 2009 1:59 AM
That's the way of things, when stupidity prevails, you're not going to get an interesting reply. Take the basic arguments you see against evolution "How can chance create X?" "have you ever seen a cat turn into a dog?" "if we came from apes, why are there still apes?" etc. Unfortunately with all the really cool things in evolutionary theory, it's those kind of answers that we need to keep answering because those are the objections raised. Same applies for morality, unfortunately instead of talking how morality really works, we are forced to defend the notion of moral nihilism that only the fundie god could starve off. Yes, there is always that. It sounds very Voltaire (If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him). I have an evidentiary problem with such thinking, that religion because of its power to give a strong yet simplistic sense of right and wrong can push people into willingly doing wicked acts, or at the very least giving a societal justification for oppression. I find it telling that in the United States right now, the main opposition to equal rights for homosexuals is coming from religious communities - that such acts are wrong in God's eyes. And while the talk of putting homosexuals to death may be limited to a few extremes, it's that very context of a stringent and simplistic moral code that is justifying that oppression. Yeah, it does have those advantages. Although the resistance to change is a problem if the system changes what environment its in. Maybe a ethical doctrine written up in tribal agrarian societies doesn't work so well in the context of a civilisation, and might be completely alien in a multicultural society where political notions such as liberty and equality take hold. The resistance to change can then inevitably lead to conflict.It seems appropriate to quote Charles Darwin: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Stable over a long period of time might be useful in the long term, but can it survive a moral-punctuated equilibrium? ;)
Posted by: Wowbagger | October 31, 2009 2:25 AM
I can't say I agree with this - the bolded section at least - for Christianity. Christians act in the same ways (certainly no better, on average) as non-Christians and make plenty of personal interpretations as to which parts of the bible or church teachings they adhere to. Why else would there be 38,000 denominations if it wasn't unstable and open for personal interpretation?
The fact that society has made so many changes (thinks like democracy, slavery, gender equality etc.) unrelated to - and often in spite of - the tenets of Christianity is evidence of that.
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | October 31, 2009 2:30 AM
There is no conflict between such a belief and those rules if euthanasia is not perceived as harmful. (That's what makes it euthanasia rather than murder, isn't it?)
An innocent baby is more helpless than an adult, so looking after the child first is much more likely to save a life (other things being equal). The difference between 'modern' settled/industrial societies and the hunter-gatherer past is that things are closer to being equal, whereas the expectation of survival/reproduction/reciprocation was formerly very much higher for the adult, for the reasons Brownian noted in #51.
But what if it's a life-or-death choice between the adult and the infant, both strangers? (One of them must die, both are totally helpless.) The conventional and 'PC' expectation would be to save the child. I wonder, what do people actually do, or say they would do in anonymous surveys, as opposed to asking them face-to-face?
Posted by: Oran Kelley | October 31, 2009 2:49 AM
Kel:
Responding to or even focusing on really dumb evolutionary arguments is a bit different, I think, because the science is so strong. There's little chance that evolutionary biology proper will be drawn away from its real business by questions like "Did you ever see a cat turn into a dog."
However that's not really the case with things like arguments about the origins & functions of morality, say. The science here is pretty immature and it seems to me that in contexts like these what is said about morality is more or less determined by the perceived need to counter stupid arguments about it. The tail really starts to wag the dog and not only are the specific anti-religious counter-arguments unsophisticated, but the theory behind them is, too.
The homosexuality question I wonder about--what really drives it? Religion as such certainly plays the role of moral border cop and has played a huge role in the continued oppression of homosexuals, but I'm not sure how the elimination of religion would affect things. I'm thinking that the identification of internal and external "others" is something that runs deeper in us even than religion.
As to flexibility: thinking about it, religion *has* shown itself to be very adaptable, but it convincingly imbues itslf with an aura of permanence. I'd say this "air of the eternal" is one of the major components of what we might call the "religion effect."
Lastly--I think my own thinking about religion would probably be that religion could work to improve social cohesion and create a feeling of regularity and predictability in the behavior of others. It doesn't make people behave in a way that *I* consider to be more moral necessarily, but may well make social groups more successful.
Posted by: echidna
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October 31, 2009 3:04 AM
I googled "diabetic woman stuck cave" and got this: http://geolounge.com/stuck-woman-traps-south-african-cave-group.
Working on the assumption "what goes in must be able to come out", rescue workers greased up the stuck woman with parrafin and got her out. It took 10 hours, but in the meantime they were able to get insulin to the diabetic.
Posted by: Kel, OM | October 31, 2009 3:39 AM
I'd contend that the evidence that humans have innate moral senses is quite strong too, at least in the sense that goes beyond the notion that one needs a higher power in order to be moral. Do you honestly think that there's not sufficient enough evidence to put morality as anything but God-given? Or are you just playing devil's advocate? I'd disagree with you there. The science might still be in its infancy, but these questions are hardly new, nor are they being driven by objections. I remember doing ethics at university and we didn't even touch the science behind it all. There's just so much in the discipline from philosophy that there are modes of thinking in ethics that have been tested historically and culturally around the world as we speak.Dawkins in his new book talks about the earth as being one big laboratory, and I think it applies for questions of politics / morality / governments / etc. We can see evidentially how different societies work under different moral doctrines, under the levels by which the society is influenced by its geography, its history, its resources, and its ideas.
I'm not talking about the elimination of religion. Why is it always dichotomised that if you speak out against religion you are arguing for its abolishment? I don't want religion to go away, all I'm arguing for here is that there needs to be a greater awareness of how morality is an innate part of our being. And as for homosexuality, I wouldn't say that religion is the driving force - rather it's the tool the bigots use to push their agenda for precisely the reason you mentioned above. It might be, just as nationalism might be too. Jingoism might be great for pushing social cohesion, but just because it is that way, should we refrain from pushing for multiculturalism?It seems your argument has gotten to "if you argue against foreign occupation of the military, it must mean that you want all government to be abolished" - I can't just talk politics in regard to military, it must mean that I'm an anarchist because I don't accept that aggression against foreign lands is part of any government. Can I speak out on torturing prisoners without it being that I want terrorists to walk free? But I digress...
Posted by: Azkyroth
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October 31, 2009 3:52 AM
Did he offer any thoughts on why this focus on intent might have evolved? The obvious one I can see is that a person's intent in taking a given action has some predictive value with regard to what they're likely to do in future situations.
Posted by: Oran Kelley | October 31, 2009 4:39 AM
Kel: Didn't mean to imply you are advocating the elimination of religion. Just a thought experiment to help get at what role religion plays in that problem.
The fact that humans may have innate moral sense is pretty much beside the point. Take it as a given, look around the world and tell me you think that's enough to make people behave. The guys that killed Matthew Shepard, the Hutu marauders, Hitler, Idi Amin & Hannity all belong to a species with an innate moral sense. Clearly innate moral sense is insufficient as a guarantor against moral calamity.
Which, more or less, is what the believers are worried about.
We need not *give up* on ideas like multiculturalism, even if we come to realize that jingoism has been an important social glue, BUT the realization does contribute some focus to the conversation--is that glue something we've outgrown? Have we replaced it? Might we be better to work with it--ameliorate it--rather than supersede it, etc.
Posted by: Oran Kelley | October 31, 2009 4:56 AM
I can't say I agree with this - the bolded section at least - for Christianity. Christians act in the same ways (certainly no better, on average) as non-Christians
Well, I guess I'd have to know what is being compared to what. Some Christians fear that an thoroughgoingly atheistic society would eventually run into a nihilism problem. I don't think we have a proper test case yet. Europe may not be particularly Christian anymore, but it is certainly post-Christian (it's morals are still largely determined by the Christian tradition).
and make plenty of personal interpretations as to which parts of the bible or church teachings they adhere to. Why else would there be 38,000 denominations if it wasn't unstable and open for personal interpretation?
Well, I'd say first that the relative stability I was talking about is a stability relative to the ideological alternatives. Ideas tend to be highly unstable, but with the God thing tend to be a bit more stable--through the hierarchy of the church--can change more uniformly across society.
Second I grant that there are lots of denominations, but how distinct are each of them?
And I think the plethora of denominations may mean that we here in the US are at the threshhold of Post-Christianity, too.
The fact that society has made so many changes (thinks like democracy, slavery, gender equality etc.) unrelated to - and often in spite of - the tenets of Christianity is evidence of that.
The anti-slavery movement was a religious one. The women's rights movement, particularly early on, was pretty religious. And churches splayed a huge role in paving the way to democracy . . . some old churches practiced a far more perfect version of democracy that we did . . . or do.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself
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October 31, 2009 5:45 AM
Yes, but...
Many of the pro-slavery arguments were religious (Ham's descendants being cursed, etc.). Paul's misogynism
was often cited in anti-feminist arguments.
The more democratic churches in the 17th and 18th Centuries were the more marginalized ones. Other than the Quakers, democratic churches were small. The Shakers and Mennonites may not have had hierarchies but they didn't have much influence either. The Catholics and most mainstream Protestant Churches were strongly hierarchical and anti-democratic.* English CofE bishops are still automatically members of the House of Lords.
*In 1906 Pope Pius X issued a fatwah against Italians voting in elections. This was later rescinded when Socialists started winning elections. He then declared it a sin to vote for a Socialist candidate.
Posted by: John Morales | October 31, 2009 6:03 AM
Oran,
No worries.
Anyone I know who cares to know whether I'm an atheist or not, does¹. I very much doubt any of those people consider me nihilistic. :)
The more Christians interact with atheists, the more they'll see we're no more nihilistic than anyone else — we're just people.
--
¹ Interestingly, the bulk of those I know neither know nor care. I feel sorry for you Americans in the Bible Belt! ;)
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 31, 2009 1:18 PM
See comment 62. "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler" – Albert Einstein.
Actually, I can't even answer that question for myself, probably because I can't imagine such a situation. And if, I'm with Cpt. Kirk when it comes to hopeless situations...
This charge has been made in the other direction, too: Christianity can lead you to consider this vale of tears a temporary station that will soon be over (at least for you) and doesn't matter in the end. What profiteth it man if he heap up treasures on Earth but none in the Heavens?
This applies especially to those who believe in the Rapture.
It goes without saying that this doesn't apply to the vast majority of Christians. Thus, we shouldn't expect it to apply to many atheists either.
Posted by: Kel, OM | October 31, 2009 4:15 PM
I'm going to say it is and it isn't. If you're expecting everyone to behave all of the time because of any system, then I think you're setting an impossible standard. But for most people most of the time? Yes, I think it sufficient. In any case, I don't think religion is going to help in that regard. There's more than our innate sense. There's the law, there's the system of government we live under, there's the socio-economic conditions of the population, there's different principles that people live by. I'm not going to say our moral sense alone is enough, but it is the framework by which all builds on it.Take the Nordic countries. In Sweden, they have up to 85% of people who don't believe. Yet is this country tearing itself apart in the absence of religion? It's not, it stands tall as an example of how to structure a society. So in answer to your question, yes and no. No because there needs to be law, there needs to be government. Yes because the moral sense permits people to work inside such framework.
Yet religious people behave immorally all the time. By their own standards of morality, religious people and especially fundamentalists are more likely to be adulterers, divorce, be in prison, than their non-religious counterparts in the US. I'm not suggesting that religion causes people to be that way, just saying the figures show that what they fear happens more in their populations than it does to the godless. Which, more or less, is why its important to correct this misunderstanding on the nature of humanity.Posted by: Oran Kelley | October 31, 2009 7:28 PM
Again, it is not necessary for my argument that religious people behave nicely, or even consistently with their own morals, but rather than religion be an effective support to the kind of social reciprocity that keeps major social breakdowns from occuring.
But what does that mean? Most people, most of the time throughout our history on the planet? throughout the history of civilization?
Posted by: John Morales | October 31, 2009 8:18 PM
Oran:
You're equivocating between 'religion' and 'religious people'.
Besides, you've shifted from the context of religion engendering morality to that of religion engendering social cohesion.
In regards to that, consider the Indian rebellion of 1857, or the second Sudanese civil war, or the Sri Lankan civil war, or the Thirty Years War, or the English Reformation, or ... [etc etc].
Religion is problematic because it has many different forms, and historically has led to social destabilisation as well as cohesion.
Posted by: Kel, OM | October 31, 2009 8:22 PM
I agree it can be, as I can agree that government can be as well. Science can be too, the more I've understood about the nature of animals. the more that has influenced my views on animal welfare. That if we aren't special, but represent a continuum in qualitative distinction, then obviously I'm going to be more empathetic towards animals and in particular primates.Yes, I agree that religion can be effective. For one thing, it gives a certain flexibility in trust. That in-group / out-group mentality. If you tie morality towards the idea of religion, then surely it follows that one would be more inclined to trust strangers of that same religion. But I'd contend that it can only work to within limits as dictated by genes and experience. Take fundamentalist religions that preach premarital sex is a sin. It's evil. As a consequence the children aren't given a proper sex education and higher teen pregnancy results. Why? Because the biological imperative to have sex is outweighing the moral dictum.
But I'm getting off-track. I agree that religion can be an effective support to the kind of social reciprocity that keeps major social breakdowns from occurring - to an extent. In a multicultural society, it would seem that such a social stabiliser has to either dominate the culture thus any new people from a different culture would need to integrate with it, or that its role would have to be diminished for another equivalent force. i.e. the government.
I'd agree that organising force is there, but I'd maintain my contention that it can be counter-productive in some circumstances. Right now I'd contend that we can see the ill-effects of this in-group / out-group mentality being played out in societal cases of ethics where the in-group cohesion is clashing against the wider general principles of liberty and equality (in the eyes of the law). And it's this I put down to the organised oppression of homosexual rights. I'm betting if most people were asked about how they felt, it would be largely a non-issue. But as it happens the organising forces of social cohesion mean that homosexuality as an assault on what holds their group together.
This is quite speculative on my part, and in all probability I could be wrong or simplifying the issue to the point where I'm misrepresenting it. All I'm trying to get at is that there are certain elements of the same organising principle that could produce long stability that are now becoming a nuisance, and that the advantages it once gave societies have been superseded in modern society. In that I find it no surprise that with such distrust in the government in the US that fundamentalist religion is on the rise. I find it no surprise in Nordic countries where the government plays more of a social welfare role that there are more non-believers than not.
So I seem to be partially agreeing with you within limits, though I'd love to be shown where my thinking or understanding of the situation is wrong. That's how I learn.
Throughout the history of the planet. Obviously this is quite a grand claim and I can only corroborate it with circumstantial reasoning - namely that for the long time before there was religion there was still the same needs for group interactions. But also that in the animal kingdom other than us, we see populations organising themselves in cooperative manners and fighting in among these groups is limited. Not to mention that reciprocity is an incredibly stable strategy, and again can be seen in the animal kingdom. As can the development of "anti-cheating" genes, to catch those who try to cheat the group collective (there was a recent paper in nature about this)So when I say most people most of the time, I mean that for most interactions we have in our lives, we don't need anything more than our social-oriented brains. I'm not saying that ideas contribute nothing, I'm greatly indebted in my moral sense to the enlightenment and in particular the likes of John Stuart Mill. I'm saying that religion isn't a necessity, and in some instances can cause problems.
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | October 31, 2009 8:42 PM
Then why did it take so long? Christians had had Jesus' teachings for nearly 2,000 years before they decided to start working against slavery and for suffrage and other democratic concepts. That these things did not occur earlier is damn good evidence that Christianity doesn't direct societal change; rather, it moves with it - and often unwillingly.
It's incorrect to assume that just because religion claims to engender morality that it actually does so. The only part religion has played in the process is by substituting a guess - that god exists and commands/inspires goodness - for the truth: that we evolved (and are continuing to evolve) behaviour on a social level.
It's like me writing down on a piece of paper 'be nice to each other' and claiming I invented the idea of altruism. At best you could say religion worked as a means of communicating the morality we've evolved. And we've got much better at communicating in the days since Moses knocked out a few stone tablets and came down the mountain with them.
Posted by: Oran Kelley | November 1, 2009 10:28 AM
Kel:
Your last post there is pretty much reflects where I'm at as well. Thanks for kicking this around with me--it's been interesting.
Wowbagger: that we evolved (and are continuing to evolve) behaviour on a social level.
I think the scale of society has far outstripped our evolved social toolkit, which is based largely on face-to-face contact and, it appears, includes xenophobic and aggressive elements that very much need to be mediated in a large, differentiated society.
Religion, I would say, is probably partially an outgrowth of certain evolved tendencies--like agent-detection, say--but has become institutionalized as a means of mediating and directing our evolved social impulses in a context they were not "designed" for.
Religion, then, is probably not necessary to our moral behavior, either in the more universal sense or in the group-function sense, but it has played a role, however imperfectly, in letting us live successfully in far larger and more complex groups than we might have otherwise.
So, envisioning a society less dependent on religion also means envisioning a society where other institutions or collective practices begin to take over its role. To some extent this has happened in some places and among some people--Sweden would be a good example, but the transition is already at work everywhere in the West--religion in America today is a very different beast than it was in the 17th century (as is the case with Islamic fundamentalism or fascism: an essentially modernist, yet anti-modern, movement, not a traditional one). Contemporary American religion, I'd say, is largely one of our replacement institutions for old time state-associated religion. It's not that we are behind Sweden, it is that we've worked he same transition in a different (and imo somewhat pathological way).
Partially, this course is a direct result of the failure of secularist leaders to anticipate the needs created within our large, fast-moving, mobile, highly differentiated society. Mostly they were under an illusion that a progress toward a Sweden-style state was inevitable or natural. I think sometimes the secularist movement today while disabused of this last illusion still often misunderstands religion badly.
How well Sweden's transition has worked, what potential there is for scaling up the same process to bigger, more belligerent, more heterogeneous states, what kinds of challenges its reconfigured society can effectively face are still open questions, to my mind.
Posted by: Sgt Skepper | November 2, 2009 9:09 AM
I'd just like to add my vote for "Moral Minds" which I read a couple of years ago. It's an excellent book!
Posted by: TokyoTom | November 3, 2009 7:01 AM
PZ, if I may, allow me to copy a few thoughts I posted elsewhere on this:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/08/28/fun-with-self-deception-those-who-espouse-an-quot-objective-quot-moral-order-act-refuse-to-elucidate-or-act-as-if-there-is-none.aspx
"[M]an has an exquisite moral sense, my own view is that that sense and capacity are something that we acquired via the process of evolution, as an aid to intra-group cooperation,
- as Bruce Yandle has suggested, http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-commons-tragedy-or-triumph/
- as argued by Roy Rappaport (former head of the American Anthropology Assn.) in his book "Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity" (which I have discussed here)
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/06/22/evolution-amp-religion-idle-hands-express-idle-thoughts-about-bob-murphy-s-determination-to-apply-reason-to-his-insistence-that-quot-non-believers-burn-in-hell-quot.aspx
and - as I have recently discovered -
- as David Sloan Wilson has argued in his book "Darwin`s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society".
"I note that the NYT has recently run a series of posts on related topics.
"In my view, our moral sense, rituals and "sacred postulates" (later, religions) have played a central role in the evolution of man as a social animal, by providing a fundamental way of ordering the world, the group`s role in it, and the individual`s role in the group - thereby abating commons problems both within and created by the group. The religious lies at the root of our human nature, even as its inviolable, sacred truths continue to fall by the wayside during the long march of culture and science out of the Garden of Eden. While we certainly have made progress (partly with the aid of "universal" religions) in expanding the boundaries of our groups, we very much remain group, tribal animals, fiercely attentive to rival groups and who is within or outside our group, and this tribal nature is clearly at work in our cognition (our penchant for finding enemies, including those who have different religious beliefs that ours)."
My full of links can be seen at my original post.